She received a B.A. in International Relations from Pomona College in Claremont, California, USA., and a M.A. and D.Phil. in International Relations from the New College, Oxford, UK.[3] She received an honorary doctorate from Pomona College in 2019.[4] She is a graduate of National Cathedral School for Girls (1979), and was one of the first African American students in the sixties at Beauvoir, the National Cathedral Elementary School.
From September 2005 on Brimmer was a visiting professor at the College of Europe.[6]
She was nominated to the post of Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs by President Barack Obama on March 11, 2009, and was confirmed by the United States Senate on April 2, 2009. Previously, Dr. Brimmer served as Deputy Director and Director of Research at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, Washington, D.C.[7]
She left her post at the State Department in June 2013 to resume her position in academia.
Personal life
Brimmer is the daughter of Andrew Brimmer, the first African American to have served as governor of the Federal Reserve System. Her husband is historian and author Steven Beller. They have one son Nathaniel.[10]
Publications
She has, inter alia, edited Transforming Homeland Security: U.S. and European Approaches (2006), The Strategic Implications of European Union Enlargement (with Fröhlich, 2005), The EU’s Search for a Strategic Role: ESDP and Its Implications for Transatlantic Relations (2002) and The European Union Constitutional Treaty: A Guide for Americans (2004), and she is the author of The United States, the European Union and International Human Rights Issues (2002).[11]